


You Will Still Be Here Tomorrow, But Your Dreams May Not

by BonitaBreezy



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Anxiety Attacks, But they're not perfect, Character Study, I'm pretty sure these tags are all totally meaningless my bad, Jack and Bitty are dads, Light Angst, M/M, Married Couple, One Shot, This is really self indulgent, also their OC son, but also some light fluff, kind of not really, teenagers aren't easy, who is a moody teenager
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-08
Updated: 2016-11-08
Packaged: 2018-08-29 22:20:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8507632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BonitaBreezy/pseuds/BonitaBreezy
Summary: Raising kids is hard.  Jack and Bitty are coming to understand that, even when you try your very best, sometimes you still fall short.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first Check Please fic! It wrote it in like...four hours? and it's self-beta'd. So if there are mistakes that's totally my fault, I tried to weed them out. I'm not really sure what to say about this? It was just an idea that came to me and I wanted to get it down and out there. So...I hope you enjoy it, I guess.  
> Title is from Father and Son by Cat Stevens

Bitty was used to a fair share of chaos in his life and in his home.  He'd always been a nurturer at heart, so it wasn’t particularly surprising that he ended up with people poking around looking for some comfort or conversation at all hours of the day. Between various Samwell alums, professional NHL players, and what seemed to be a whole crew of teenage boys day in and day out, Bitty had learned to expect the unexpected, and to always have cookies in the cookie jar. 

But he didn't think he ever could have expected to come home to a heated argument between his son and his husband. 

“I just don't understand what you were thinking!” Jack was saying, trying to sound calm and collected, but mostly coming across as disappointed. 

“We were just having fun!” Jamie insisted, and he wasn't trying to hide his frustration at all. 

“You broke into someone’s  _ home _ !” 

Bitty gasped and thought about rushing into the living room and demanding to know every detail right that second, but his stomach roiled at the idea of getting involved in their argument.  Avoiding confrontation had always been one of his flaws. 

“It was just Mark’s aunt’s house it’s not like it's a big deal!” Jamie snapped, and Bitty could just imagine the scowl on his son’s face, and the way he’d slump his shoulders and roll his eyes. 

“It is a big deal!” Jack fired back. “It's breaking and entering! You're lucky she didn't press charges!  That sort of thing could destroy your future, did you think about that?”

“Whatever,” Jamie huffed. 

“I just don't understand, James,” Jack said again, plaintively. “Is there something you want to tell me that you feel like you can't?  Is it hockey, is the pressure too much?  You know you can stop any time you want--”

“Hockey is fine, god,” Jamie huffed.

“So then, what's the problem?” Jack asked. “Let me help.”

“There is no problem!” Jamie snapped. “And I don't need your help, I'm fine!”

Jack said something angrily in French then, and then switched back to English, “So what am I supposed to do then?  Just excuse your terrible behavior?”

“Well, sorry we can't all be the amazing Jack Zimmermann,” Jamie spat. “How is anyone supposed to be able to live up to Mr. Perfect himself, anyway?”

There was a long moment of utter silence, and Bitty forgot to breathe for a moment, and then Jamie was storming out of the living and stomping up the stairs. He didn't even glance at Bitty as he went, but the quiet gasping from the living room told Bitty clearly where he was needed more at the moment. And anyway, the loud slam from Jamie’s bedroom door told Bitty his son needed some time to cool off. 

He rushed into the living room, where he found Jack seated on the couch with his head in his hands.  He looked so tiny there, with his shoulders hiked up tightly to his ears and his forehead almost touching his knees.  He was trembling visibly, worse than Bitty had seen in years.

“Oh, sweetheart,” he cooed, rushing over to kneel on the floor in front of him. It made him even shorter than usual, but it put him in the perfect position to look Jack in the face. “Come on, just breathe with me. You're okay.”

He kept on talking in a calm, soothing voice, not really saying anything important but just trying to get Jack calm enough that he could function again.  It took a while, but eventually the trembling stopped, and then Jack’s breathing evened out.  Bitty kept stroking his arm until Jack managed to sit up straight, taking himself out of the protective ball he’d rolled himself into.  He grabbed on to Bitty’s elbows, and though his knees were really starting to protest, Bitty stayed where he was.

“You good?” Bitty asked, and Jack nodded. “Okay.  You want to tell me what’s going on?”

“I’ve ruined our son,” Jack mumbled. “I put too much pressure on him, or...something.  I did something to make him think he has to live up to some perfect idea of me.  I’m not perfect, Bits…”

“Oh, darling, believe me, I know that,” Bitty told him. “And whatever is going on, we’re going to fix it, okay?  It’s all going to be fine.”

“I screwed myself up so much when I was young,”  Jack said. “I put too much pressure on myself and it almost killed me.  And now I’m doing it to him.”

“Jack, honey,” Bitty said. “You’ve never pressured that boy a day in his life.  You’ve always gone out of your way  _ not _ to pressure him.”

“But he said…”

“I know what he said,” Bitty said patiently. “And there’s something more to this whole thing, I just know it.  I’m going to go talk to him and see if I can figure it out, okay?”

“Okay,” Jack said, but he looked like the last thing he wanted to do was let go of Bitty.  He kind of understood the impulse, but he also needed to go check on their son.  Jamie had had nearly half an hour to calm down, and Bitty was going to start to feel guilty about leaving him alone soon.

“Do you want to call someone?” Bitty asked. “Shitty?  Your mom?”

“My dad,” Jack said, much to Bitty’s surprise.  They got along just fine, but he had assumed it would be a little too on the nose for Jack to talk to his dad about this.  But maybe that was the whole point.

“All right,” Bitty said gently.  He pulled out his own phone, since Jack showed no indication of reaching for his, and dialed Bob. “Here, you go.  If he doesn’t answer, promise me you’ll call Shitty, okay?”

“Okay,” Jack said, finally letting Bitty go and taking the phone.  Bitty stood up-his poor knees protesting the whole way-and pressed a kiss to Jack’s temple, right where his dark hair had started to go gray.

As he was headed up the stairs, he was glad to hear Jack start speaking rapid-fire French.  Assured that that was taken care of, he went to Jamie’s bedroom door, the one that still had his name painted on it in primary colored block letters from when he was four.  Over the years, his bedroom had changed from toys and ninja-turtle bedsheets to band posters and hockey trophies, but those same five letters painted on the door had remained just the same.  Sometimes Bitty wished his son had too.  He loved Jamie more than anything else on the planet, but he could admit that he’d been a lot sweeter and easier when he was little.

He knocked on the door, three solid raps, and waited.  As if to prove his point, Bitty heard a loud, dramatic sigh from inside the room and then Jamie snapped,

“Go  _ away _ , Papa!”

“I’m sorry,” Bitty said, copying the warning tone his mama had drilled into him since childhood, the one that made him cringe guiltily all the way into adulthood. “I don’t know who you think you’re talking to like that.”

There was a very long pause, and then the door cracked open and Jamie was there with his very best pathetic puppy eyes on.  He looked so much like Jack it was almost haunting, and at sixteen he was almost as tall, but somehow he still managed to look like a tiny, sad puppy with those eyes.  Luckily, Bitty had grown immune to them by the time he was three.

“Are you going to let me in?” Bitty asked.

“Are you going to yell at me?” Jamie returned.

“Well, that remains to be seen,” Bitty admitted. “But for now I think you and your Papa have the yelling well covered.  I just want to talk.”

Jamie hesitated for another long moment, and Bitty was on the verge of pulling the parent card when he finally huffed loudly and stepped back so that Bitty could enter.  The room itself was a downright mess, with clothes all over the floor and a truly horrifying amount of dishes stacked on the desk.

“Oh my god, Jamie,” he said, getting momentarily sidetracked. “Clean this room!  If you can’t take your dishes back to the kitchen, you’re not going to be allowed to eat in here.  We’ll get mice!”

“Sorry,” Jamie grumbled, kicking the clothes into a pile in the corner of the room, which was a little bit better but not by all that much.

It took everything he had in him to focus on the task at hand instead of picking up the room himself, but thinking about how upset Jack was downstairs helped him.  Instead, he pulled out Jamie’s desk chair, ignoring the three different hoodies thrown over the back of it, and sat down.  He gestured for Jamie to do the same, and he sighed and plopped down on the end of the bed so heavily he sent a few pillows and Señor Bunny toppling to the ground.  He flinched and leaned over the side of the bed to scoop the stuffed rabbit up off the floor, settling him in his lap.

“Okay,” Bitty said, trying to decide where he wanted to start first. “Sugar, what the hell is going on?  You really upset your papa.”

“Figures you’d take his side,” Jamie grumbled, hunching in on himself with a scowl.

“I’m not taking anyone’s side,” Bitty insisted immediately.  Jamie snorted disbelievingly. “James, I’m not.  I just want to help.”

“I don’t need any help,” Jamie muttered. “I was just having some fun and Papa’s blowing it all out of proportion.”

“Okay, so tell me what happened,” Bitty said. “I haven’t even talked to your papa about it yet, so I’m totally unbiased.”

“You were down there with him forever,” Jamie said suspiciously. “What were you talking about?”

“Like I said, your papa was upset,” Bitty said gently. “I was calming him down.”

They’d never really hidden Jack’s issues with anxiety from Jamie, partly because they never would have been able to keep it from him as a hockey player or as a teenager.  Though it had been thirty years since Jack’s overdose, it was still brought up in hockey circles, as if it were the most important part of Jack’s career rather than the three Stanley Cup wins.  The other part was that they thought it was better to normalize Jack’s anxiety disorder for their son.  If Jamie ever had problems with anxiety and needed help, they wanted to know about it, and they wanted him to know it was okay to tell them.  Still, they had tried to minimize the impact on his life, and therefore they’d never let him see Jack in the midst of a full blown panic attack.  They hadn’t wanted to scare him, or make him worry about it too much.

“It’s not a big deal,” Jamie insisted. “We were bored and Liam’s been grounded so his mom took his car keys away and we couldn’t go anywhere.  So we went to Mark’s aunt’s house because she has that whole game room in her basement.  But when we got there she wasn’t home and it was all locked up.  But Mark’s there all the time, so he knew that one of the windows had a broken lock and we just went through that.  So it wasn’t breaking and entering, Dad, the window was already broken!”

“Oh come on, Jamie, you knew you were in the wrong,” Bitty sighed, scrubbing his hands over his face.

“Mark said it would be okay!” Jamie insisted. 

“You’re old enough to know better, whether or not Mark says it’ll be okay, aren’t you?  Because if you’re not I’m not sure you’re responsible enough to be going out without parental supervision.”

“Come on, Dad,” Jamie said, rolling his eyes. “It’s not like it was a stranger’s house, it was Mark’s aunt!  He said it would be okay!”

“But obviously it wasn’t,” Bitty pointed out. “Because you got in enough trouble that Papa had to go get you.”

“Well, it would have been fine,” Jamie muttered petulantly.  He twisted one of Señor Bunny’s ears through his fingers, a nervous habit he’d had since childhood. “It’s not my fault one of her neighbors called the cops.”

“It absolutely is your fault,” Bitty said sternly. “You broke the law, James, and you’re going to be punished for it.  But first, I want to know what’s going on with you and Papa.”

“Nothing’s going on,” Jamie grumbled. “I’m just sick of the way he treats me.”

“Jamie, Papa loves you,” Bitty told him gently. “And if he’s doing something to make you feel like he doesn’t, he’d want to know.”

“I know he loves me,” Jamie said, rolling his eyes powerfully. “He just doesn’t trust me or believe in me.”

That made Bitty pause.  Jack was nothing if not a doting father.  He’d been so determined, when they had decided to have a kid all those years ago, that he would be as supportive as humanly possible, so that their child would never feel so alone and helpless like he had.  He always made sure to check in with Jamie and make sure that everything was going okay.

“Why do you say that?” Bitty asked, trying to keep from blurting all his thoughts out and keeping Jamie from saying what he wanted to say.  It wasn’t an easy impulse, since Bitty could fill a silence like no other.

“He just doesn’t,” Jamie shrugged. “He always questions everything I do, and he has my whole life, Dad.  I’m used to it, I guess, but it’s still annoying.”

“Can you give me an example?” Bitty asked uncertainly, and Jamie hunched his shoulders again.

“I knew you’d take his side,” he mumbled again.

“Jamie, I’m not taking sides!” Bitty insisted, frustrated. “I just want to understand.  I never thought he treated you that way, but if you feel like he has then that has to come from somewhere.  So let’s figure it out, okay?”

“Just forget it,  Dad…”

“I don’t want to forget it,” Bitty said. “We want you to be happy, Sugar.  And if you think we don’t support you and you’re acting out, you’re obviously not happy.”

“I’m not acting out,” Jamie pouted. “I get in trouble a couple of times and suddenly I’m a criminal or something.”

“Well, Jamie, look at it from our perspective.  You’ve always been so well-behaved and suddenly in the past two months you’ve gotten in trouble from breaking and entering, destruction of public property, getting caught smoking in the bathrooms at school.  I’d like to blame your friends for it, because I know I raised a sweet boy, but I’ve known Mark and Liam for years and y’all’ve always been thick as thieves, so I’ve got to place a fair amount of the blame on your shoulders.  So if it’s not acting out, what is it?”

“The destruction of public property was an accident,” Jamie insisted, just the way he had when the incident had first happened. “How was I supposed to know the ball would go flying off like that and break that window?   And anyway, you and Papa made me do chores until I worked off the money you had to pay for it.  And the cigarettes...I don’t know, Dad that was stupid.”

“It was stupid,” Bitty agreed. “Especially if you want to be a professional athlete.”

“I know Papa smoked pot in college,” he muttered mutinously. “Uncle Shitty told me about it.”

“But we’re not talking about Papa,” Bitty said quickly, making a mental note to deprive Shitty of pie the next time he came by for filling his baby’s head with nonsense, even if it was true. 

“I’m just saying, Dad, I’m not having some crazy teenage rebellion, okay?  I’ve messed up a couple times but that doesn’t make me a budding criminal.  I’m not, like, doing lines of coke off a hooker’s ass.”

“Watch your mouth,” Bitty warned.

“Sorry,” he muttered. “I’m fine, Dad.  Can you just ground me so I can start getting it over with?”

“Oh, that’s coming,” Bitty assured him. “But first, I want you to talk to your Papa about what you just told me.”

“Do I have to?”

Bitty thought about that for a second before he sighed and shook his head.  Jamie looked relieved.

“No.  I don’t think it’d do any good to force you to talk to him if you don’t want to,” he said, and then, because Jamie looked like he was just fine with never speaking to Jack again he added, “But I do think it’ll help you both.  He can’t read your mind, honey.  If you don’t tell him what’s bothering you, he’s just going to keep doing it.  And I know he’d like a chance to prove how much he loves and trusts and believes in you.”

“You’re making me feel guilty,” Jamie grumbled.  Bitty just raised his eyebrows at his son, waiting, and then Jamie sighed and nodded. “Okay, I’ll talk to Papa.”

“You’re a good boy, Jamie,” Bitty said.  He got up and pressed a kiss to his son’s forehead, which he hadn’t been able to reach when they were both standing up since Jamie was twelve.  Stupid Zimmermann tall genes. “I’ll go get him.”

Jack was still on the phone when Bitty got downstairs, so he settled on the couch next to him and leaned his head against his shoulder as he finished up.

_ “Désolé Papa, je dois y aller. Merci pour me parler. Oui. Ouais. Je t'aime aussi.  À la prochaine.”  _

He hung up the phone and twiddled it nervously in his fingers a few times before he wrapped an arm around Bitty’s shoulders and pressed his cheek to the top of his head.

“How bad is it?” he asked, his accent thicker the same way it always was when he spent any length of time speaking to his father.

“He’s upset,” Bitty said honestly. “But he wants to talk to you.  Y’all have some seriously crossed wires and I think it’s important you get them straightened out.”

“Of course,” Jack said quickly. “Whatever I can do.  I never wanted to pressure him. I tried so hard not to.  I guess this is payback, though, for what I did to  _ my _ father.”

“Oh, baby, no,” Bitty shushed. “Don’t get caught up in all that.  Let’s just go talk to Jamie, okay?”

“All right,” Jack agreed. 

He was solemn all the way upstairs, holding on to Bitty’s hand the whole way, like it was the tether keeping him attached to the Earth and if he let go he’d go flying away.  His hand engulfed Bitty’s, but he’d always liked the sensation, ever since that first time Jack had hesitantly laced their fingers together in Bitty’s mama’s sedan on the drive from the Atlanta airport and held on until they reached Madison.

Jamie was still sitting on the bed where Bitty had left him, looking down at Señor Bunny in his lap and chewing on his lip.  Jack made a small, sad sound and entered the room, sitting down on the vacated desk chair and scooting it over until it was directly in front of Jamie, so close their knees were almost touching.

“What’s up, Bud?” he asked, his voice gentle.

Jamie shrugged, suddenly less talkative than he had been when he’d been complaining to Bitty.  Jack didn’t say anything, though.  He didn’t sigh or get frustrated, he just stayed quiet and waited in a patient sort of way that Bitty kind of envied.  Jack could spend an hour sitting quietly waiting for someone to say something important if he wanted to.

“ _ Je ne sais pas, Papa,”  _ Jamie muttered, still looking determinedly at his lap.

“Well…” Jack said slowly. “I guess I’ll ask then.  What did you mean when you called me Mr. Perfect?”

“Jeez, I thought that was obvious,” Jamie snorted, his need to be a sarcastic little jerk clearly overtaking his sudden awkwardness at having to have an actual mature conversation.

“Not to me,” Jack said. “I’m so far from perfect…”

“Please,” Jamie grumbled. “Three time Stanley cup winner, got the Calder and the Hart trophy.  Pioneer of the lgbt movement in the NHL…”

“Well,” Jack said. “While those things might be true, I have it on good authority that I’m also grumpy and boring and have no taste in music.  And I can be really cruel, sometimes, even to the people I care about.  I’m sorry if I was ever cruel to you, Jamie.  I love you so much, I would rather they scrape my name off the Stanley Cup all three times than ever hurt you.”

Jamie sniffled loudly then and swiped his hand across his eyes, trying to go for casual and utterly failing.  Bitty felt tears prickling behind his own eyes, but he’d always cried at the drop of a hat, so that wasn’t too surprising.  He wiped at his eyes and tried to keep his sniffles quiet because he didn’t want to interrupt them.

“I just hate that you don’t believe in me,” Jamie admitted, his voice cracking. “I love playing hockey,  Papa, and I try really hard.”

“I know you do,” Jack said, his brow furrowing in confusion. “And you’re incredible at it, from natural talent  _ and _ hard work.  I couldn’t be prouder of you, Bud.”

“But,” Jamie said, and then paused to sniffle and surreptitiously wipe his eyes again. “Then why do you always try to get me to quit?  I want to go pro, and I know it’ll be really hard, but I think I can do it…”

“I know you can do it,” Jack assured him.  He reached out and grabbed Jamie by the shoulders, pulling their son against his chest in a tight hug. “I’m so sorry, Jamie.  I never intended for you to think I wanted you to quit.  I just...I was trying, so hard, not to pressure you into it.”

“I’ve always wanted to play hockey,” Jamie said, his voice muffled and his fists curling into the back of Jack’s t-shirt. “Ever since you let me sign up for peewee when I was ten. I love it, Papa, but you’ve always tried to keep me away from it.”

“I was trying to protect you,” Jack said. “I grew up in the public eye, with everyone watching my every move and comparing me to my father every step of the way.  I wasn’t Jack Zimmermann, I was ‘Bad Bob’s Child Prodigy’, and that...I had a lot of trouble with that.   With you, I promised myself I wouldn’t even teach you to skate unless you asked to learn.  You were almost a Bittle instead of a Zimmermann because I didn’t want to force hockey on you.”

“That makes sense, I guess,” Jamie sniffled. “But then why are you still trying to get me to stop?  Every time I get even a little annoyed or upset about something you’re up in my face about quitting hockey.”

“I don’t want you to quit if you don’t want to quit,” Jack assured him. “I just want you to know that hockey isn’t everything.  There’s more to life, there’s more to you.   When I was your age, I felt trapped.  By hockey, by my father’s legacy, by my own ambition.  It took me a long time to learn how to truly love playing hockey again, rather than just playing it because it was literally the only thing I had ever worked for and the only thing I was good at.  When I tell you that you can quit at any time, I’m just trying to make sure you know that there is more to you than hockey, and I won’t be disappointed in you if you decide that’s not what you want.  Because I wish I had believed that when I was a teenager.”

“So...you don’t think I can’t do it?” Jamie asked.

“I think you’re an incredible hockey player,” Jack said. “And I think if you want to go to the NHL, you can work hard enough to get there.  But I also think, if you decide you don’t want to, you’ll have so much to offer to the world anyway.  You’re smart and you’re kind and you can do anything because you work so hard.  I’m sorry I ever made you doubt that.”

“I’m sorry, too,” Jamie said, and then he began crying in earnest.

Jack’s face crumpled, with relief and sadness and the sort of pain that only a parent could understand.  He tightened his grip around Jamie, rubbing a hand over his back and rocking them both gently, side to side.  Bitty sniffled and wiped his own eyes quickly.  Jack glanced over at him then, like he’d just remembered that Bitty was there, and then shot him a sad smile.  Jamie didn’t notice any of this, still crying and shaking apart.  

How long could he have been holding that all in, thinking that one of the people who was supposed to support him in everything didn’t believe in him?  It made Bitty’s heart hurt just to think about it, and he couldn’t even imagine how Jack felt about it.  Bitty returned the smile and blew a kiss before retreating out into the hall and down the stairs.  He would let them have their time together, so they could pick up the pieces and be okay again.  

In the meantime, a maple sugar crusted apple pie was just the thing they needed to raise some spirits.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading. It would be super cool of you to drop a comment.


End file.
